Making Short Film: Learn from my mistakes, not yours!

I'm an actor and a story writter. Thought of tranforming my stories into short films, all 7 stories! So, I dared to be a film maker with a very small budget. With an intelligent guss work, I went ahead and completed 3 short films on a self created character of "Billy Moore".  My friends tell me they are good and amusing  films.

Not knowing fully the process of submitting them to the festivals like sending screeners have to be followed by preview material submission, I just went on spending and emptying my pocket with whatever I had left with submission fee, DVDs stikers, jackets and huge transportation charges from India to the different international destinations and so on.

So, though, I'm not gonna highlight  my mistakes in my film making adventure, I am  putting below few points which you may like to consider:

• Script: Building up unique and different personalities of your characters. Let not everybody speak and act in the same way.
• People: Get people who aren't busy and are passionateto be with you in film making
• Camera/ Formats: Get a HD camera (hire it) and know fully well about shooting formats and its compatibility while editing into different formats like Bigibeta PAL, NTSC, HDCAM etc and files like MPEG, MOV etc if you want to submit it to the festivals.
• Story Board: If you can't hire an artist, sit with your director and draw a story board on paper/ computer.
• Shooting your footage: Though there should be minimum of retakes (my opinion as a cash starved film maker),  remember to get sevsral angles and takes so you will have plenty of options while editing.

Well, this much for the present blog entry.

To be continued...

To enjoy 3 short films visit: http://amusingfilms.weebly.com

To read all 7 amusing stories visit: http://shortfilmproductions.co.cc